Page 74 of What Happens This Christmas
A storm had brewed inside me. Now, that the storm had passed, the only thing left in its wake was destruction.
I didn’t know if I could manage to repair everything it had ruined. Frankly, I didn’t know if I wanted to. Why should I?
Everyone made mistakes, and the one that I made was seared into my brain and would probably remain there for all eternity. I should have never told her I was divorcing her.
What.
A.
Fucking.
Mistake.
When I turned around to finally acknowledge Eloise’s parting words, words on the tip of my tongue, she was gone. There was no trace of her. She had vanished as though she was nothing more than a figment of my imagination.
Shaking off those disturbed thoughts, I forced myself to trek into our bedroom, the space lonelier than it had ever been. Sure, we hadn’t always shared passionate, loving moments in here. We hadn’t spent every night in each other’s arms, me holding her like I would have wanted. But it was ours. Our bedroom. In our penthouse. In the city where we had met.
I groaned loudly, my chest heaving. I had been holding my breath ever since I’d seen Candy walk out of that bar.Maybe she didn’t hear me call after her.That was what I kept tellingmyself… How stupid I had been. Of course she had heard me calling her name.
My gaze shifted around the room before landing on the cream-colored envelope sitting on the top of our bed. A bed that would be worth nothing more than junkyard scrap without her in it, sharing it with me.
I begrudgingly picked up the envelope and sat manspread on the edge of the bed. It sank down as I sat, and Candy’s words popped into my head, reminding me about the potential of an ass mark in the mattress. Who gave a shit about things like that? Candy, that was who. My Candy cane.
On the envelope was my name, scrawled in Candy’s signature handwriting that had a flair all its own—just like her. As if I could think this was intended for anyone else, but Candy didn’t do anything half-assed. She double checked things. She did everything I wouldn’t even think to do because I didn’t think it mattered. I’d taken it all for granted, though, since she’d always done it.
That was the trouble with marriage. It provided false hope that something was certain, but nothing was certain. Things were taken for granted and people stopped caring. Shit changed. In the blink of an eye. In a split second. All of that.
I wasn’t a perfect man. I was flawed.
Heaven knew that I needed Candy in my life.
It had all gotten away from us, and all that I was left with were my inner demons.
Running a hand across her handwriting, I decided it was time to open the envelope.
I felt the unmistakable weight that I knew with certainty were Candy’s wedding rings. Her red diamond engagement ring and the wedding band I had custom designed to match my grandmother’s ring.
I tipped it over, allowing the two rings to spill out and into my other hand. She’d never taken either off of her finger. Yet here they were.
I loved these rings, and when I’d given them to her, I was obsessed with the idea that it was a symbol to every asshole out there that she was taken, off the market, and all mine. Even before I’d proposed, she’d been mine. Just as I’d been hers.
Nothing lasts.
But this was supposed to.Wewere supposed to.
I clutched them in my hand, making a fist to keep them safe in the palm of it. A searing pain threatened to tear me in half, and I knew that it was my heart.
I couldn’t live without her, and I didn’t want to.
The final thing that remained was a piece of paper that I had yet to read because panic flooded me when I tried. “Screw it,” I said, throwing caution to the wind and just going for it. Hesitancy wasn’t something I was interested in. It wasn’t going to change. Whatever was written on her note would be there for the duration, so I may as well have read the letter. The words that my wife left for me to feast my eyes on.
It’s for the best.
I hated those words.
Couldn’t stand them. They were just as empty as this bedroom, as this entire house without her in it. It was just as empty as I felt with a giant hole behind my rib cage.
Amazing.
